The House Rules
by Dr. Breifs Cat
Summary: When Miraculous All-Star Brawl becomes a hit among Ms. Bustier's homeroom, Adrien is the undisputed Desperada expert. Marinette has concerns.


**The House Rules**

It only took four letters to spell Ms. Mendeleiev's legendary weakness. Against S, T, E and M, she had no defense, and no student of Collège Françoise Dupont had ever wielded them with as much precision as Max Kanté. His friends never learned exactly what he had said to convince her to surrender her classroom (and its giant projector) to him during lunch break, but everyone knew what letters he had used. _T_echnology. Software _e_ngineering.

The first time Max fired up _Miraculous All-Star Brawl _on the big screen, Ms. Bustier's entire homeroom came to see. Some were drawn by the sheer ballsiness of commandeering the chem lab to play a video game. Others came because the magnitude of Max's accomplishments still felt a little surreal. The research he had done on akumatized people rivaled anything Alya had ever written on her blog, and he paired that with graphics that impressed Nathaniel and gameplay far beyond what a single person working alone should have been able to do in the time frame he'd done it in. Professional programmers took years to create each installment of _Super Smash Bros._, but Max had created a pretty similar game in a matter of months.

The first day was followed by a second, and a third, and a fourth and eventually, _Miraculous All-Star Brawl _in Ms. Mendeleiev's room during lunch break was an accepted part of daily life. Among the core group of regular players—kids that had taken to bringing a sack lunch so they didn't have to leave campus—and the casual gamers that filtered in when they had a spare few minutes or ended up back at school earlier than planned arose a set of house rules. _The homeroom rules, _because most of the kids who played where in Ms. Bustier's class. Alix even scrawled them on the Classroom Expectations poster in the literature room with a black marker one day when Ms. Bustier's back was turned.

Rule No. One: Nobody played as themself. Most of the class had been akumatized, and while everyone was pretty good about placing the blame on Hawk Moth and not his victims when it was someone else wearing the butterfly hat, a few of the kids still quietly struggled with guilt over their own alter ego's actions. It was easy to feel inadequate when the person beside you wasn't troubled by their past, so in the interest of letting everyone work things out on their own terms, it came to be decided that no one played as themselves.

Rule No. Two: Chloe-inspired akumatized persons may not fight with each other unless the match was part of an officially sanctioned Crisis on Infinite Chloes.

(A Crisis on Infinite Chloes occured when Chloe was being a brat in the morning, and realized Queen Bee ought to expect better of herself.)

Rule No. Three: Everyone had an allegiance to a specific akumatized person. When they first started playing, Max's core group treated _Miraculous All-Star Brawl _exactly as they would any other fighting game: they picked the character with the coolest look and the most bad ass moveset. But it was impossible to ignore that the characters in the game where not generic monsters—they were themselves, their friends, their classmates, their parents, that guy in the park with all the pigeons that no one can remember ever _not _being there. The game became an unexpected reminder to be a little kinder and a little bit more aware of how each person's actions affected the people around them. Everyone who played ended up with someone whose day they wished to brighten, and Alya dubbed it _allegiance. _

Adrien's allegiance was to Vivica.

When he first started being a lunch break regular, he favored Stormy Weather, occasionally switching to Frightningale or Desparada when he wanted to stir things up and be unpredictable. But by the time the idea of allegiance cropped up, he was already a dedicated Desperada player, the undisputed expert on the character. Casual players like Juleka didn't even bother sitting down when they had the bad luck to draw against Adrien and Desperada.

And he would just smile.

Marinette was _concerned. _

Despite what comic books had taught her, maintaining her secret identity had not been that hard. She had had a few close calls, but generally, she learned that people didn't really worry that much about the eccentricities of others. Her absurd excuses rarely received so much as a raised eyebrow. Since she had never been able to drum up much enthusiasm for the celebrity that came hand in hand with superheroics, Marinette was in no danger of giving herself away by chattering about Ladybug when her classmates started fawning over their friendly neighborhood bug and cat.

Maintaining her silence when Adrien was suffering, though...that was hell.

Only Ladybug knew. Cat Noir knew she had intended to give the Snake Miraculous to Adrien, but he had never gotten the chance to work with Aspik. Doubtless things would have been different if she had been able to contain her excitement about working alongside her crush long enough to wait for her _partner. _Viperion knew something, but how much had Luka overheard and understood? Only Ladybug knew Adrien had spent months reliving the battle with Desperada, looping again and again, searching for a way to protect her that he could never find.

Plain old Marinette wasn't supposed to know about that. Wasn't supposed to know he _kept count. _

How had he even done that? How had the stress of the situation not caused him to lose his place?

(Maybe he did lose his place. Maybe the time he spent looping was actually much longer than he thought.)

Plain old Marinette wasn't supposed to know, but he had confessed everything to Ladybug. Marinette couldn't ask him if he was okay when she saw him smile after defeating someone as Desperada, but Ladybug could.

(Ladybug should have checked up on him right away. Ladybug should have known he would need support from his story alone. A superhero should not need assistance from a video game.)

It was difficult to schedule a superhero wellness check on someone with an entourage and his degree of commitments. Fencing, Chinese, photoshoots. Nathalie, his bodyguard, his father—the last never close but always looming. Her own extracurriculars seriously cut into the available hours, too. Sometimes it felt like Hawk Moth was doing it on purpose, like he, too, knew Adrien's schedule by heart and dropped an akuma whenever there was a lull.

It wasn't ideal, but Marinette finally accepted she was not going to be able to do it unless she slipped out of her bedroom through the rooftop trapdoor after her parents thought she was asleep. (She was very lucky to have a room so easy to sneak out of and so hard to believe someone actually _could. _Tikki would chalk that up to being the Chosen One.)

Once transformed, a few swings of her yo-yo was all it took to reach the Agreste manor. Ladybug lowered herself from the roof down to the tall windows that lined Adrien's bedroom, hanging upside down and hoping he was still awake.

She could hear the television. A good omen. Unless he fell asleep watching TV (and he didn't seem like the type), he was probably awake.

Ladybug hung before the open window and tapped on its neighbor. Nothing.

She squinted, looking past the TV, into the depths of the room. Adrien sat at his computer, illuminated in the darkness by the light of the monitor. Even from the window, Ladybug could recognize the Ladyblog.

Adrien was chewing on the blunt end of a pen, which was just _adorable. _It hung out of his mouth, bobbing up and down as he worked his jaw, a completely unexpected sight. She learned something new about him today!

Ladybug tapped on the window again, but it seemed he could not hear her over the television. She was a superhero; she didn't want to intrude. She tried again.

The television went off.

Ladybug jerked in surprise. The abrupt silence was a bit spooky, but given the hour, it was likely he had it on a timer. Marinette did the same thing when she listened to podcasts before bed.

Adrien turned his head toward the TV, and in his line of sight hung Ladybug, still upside down.

The pen fell out of his mouth.

She waved.

Adrien was spurred into a flurry of activity that she could only presume was what happened when a superhero unexpectedly dropped by his room. He closed the browser (as if she would be offended he read the Ladyblog!), swept some papers on his desk into a drawer, kicked a cabinet shut, ran across the room, all but _vaulted _over the couch in his haste (and threw a pillow as he went) before skidding to a stop in front of her.

And he _smiled. _

A good smile, bright and beautiful and joyous. Nothing like the way he smiled when he defeated someone as Desperada.

Adrien held out his hand, and Ladybug took it. She didn't need the help to right herself, but he was such a gentleman that she couldn't resist. She didn't let go of his hand when her feet hit the window sill, or when she retracted her yo-yo, or even when she slipped into the room.

"Hi."

"Hi."

(She had come on a very urgent mission to check up on a boy who had been through something terrible on her behalf, who she had reason to believe was still suffering and the best she could come up with was _'Hi?' _And she wasn't even the first one to say it?)

"So what brings you here, Ladybug?" She loved the way he said her name, so deliberate. Worry marred his pretty face. "Is my family in danger?"

"No! No! Nothing like that!" She stole her hand away to wave away his fear of impending doom.

"That's good." And just like that, Adrien was back to smiles, this one small and soft. He looked like he was expecting something.

She wished she knew what.

Better get down to business! "I heard _Miraculous All-Star Brawl _is really popular with your class at school."

Silence. Sometimes, as Marinette, she would imagine conversations. Write out in her head the way she wanted them to go, the way she feared they would go. She had the sudden feeling that Adrien had scripts in his brain, too, different conversations he had imagined having with Ladybug. But his mental Ladybugs never said what the real one did. He was so far off script he couldn't find his place. "It's really fun." Such a generic reply did not warrant the deliberation he had given it. "You should try it."

Oh, if only he knew. "I'll think about it. Being a superhero doesn't leave a lot of time for video games."

Adrien eyed her, a sly quirk to his brow. "You aren't fighting the forces of evil right now. Let's play. I have it on my computer."

Ladybug did not often have the luxury of taking the slow and cautious approach. She usually had to figure out where an akuma was hiding while defending herself and innocent passersby at the same time. Once she used her Lucky Charm, it was a race against the clock to defeat the akumatized person before she transformed back. But no akuma meant no Lucky Charm and no countdown. She had all the time in the world for Adrien. If he wanted to play, who was she to say no?

The game was what had led her to come, after all. This could only open up avenues to tackle the issues she wanted to discuss.

Adrien guided her around the couch and into his desk chair. Before she could get comfortable, he seemed to realize he did not have a second chair and dragged over the piano bench. He shooed her out of the cushioned chair and pushed it aside. They had to sit very close to share the bench, but there was room for them both.

(She loved how he smelled. She knew it was true love because just being around him felt so familiar.)

The version of _Miraculous All-Star Brawl _that Adrien booted up was the same one she had at home. The version Max uploaded to Ms. Mendeleiev's computer was debugged, and some of the movesets had changed. She was a lot more comfortable with the buggy version. When she was really in the zone, it was hard to remember that she didn't have to compensate for known glitches.

Marinette's classmates all knew her allegiance was to Riposte. She wanted to know more about fencing, and Kagami needed more kindness in her life, so it seemed like a good fit. But Riposte being her best character did not mean she didn't know them all. And she had worked with Max on QA. She was good at every character, and especially on this version.

Ladybug selected Random. Adrien picked Desperada.

Fortune was with Ladybug—she ended up with Copycat. She had her Cataclysm strategy down pat. Adrien would get a good fight.

Or so she thought. Copycat was knocked off the platform in about ten seconds.

Adrien laughed with humble sheepishness at his own skill. "Rematch?"

Forget leaving things up to chance! Ladybug picked Befana. Ranged attacks, can't be knocked off the platform if she's flying.

As the seconds ticked by on the screen, Ladybug realized the best she could say was that her second defeat had not been as embarrassing as the first. She was not the sort to back down from a fight. Two losses had done nothing but make her thirsty for a win. Adrien didn't have to propose another match. Ladybug's fingers flew across the controller to select Style Queen while her strategies did a screen crawl in her mind's eye.

But Desperada made quick work of Style Queen, too.

"Why do you always pick Desperada?"

He didn't sound like he thought the question was petulant. "I like girl fighters."

"There are a lot of good female characters."

Adrien, former Stormy Weather aficionado, readily agreed but added, "Desperada works really well with the mechanics of the game."

"Befana should be unbeatable! What makes Desperada so great?"

"Real akumatized people are creative with their powers. Take the Mime." On the computer screen, Adrien's selector jumped to him. "In real life, he could mime anything, right? But in the game, he can only mime what Max programed him to mime. A good Mime player can pull off some awesome combos, but it's still a limitation that the real Mime didn't have. Desperada in the game uses her instruments to capture an opponent in her guitar case. It's just like real life. She doesn't lose what makes her her because she's a fake version with a programed moveset."

Ladybug had to give him credit. The reasoning was solid. Akumatized people with straightforward point-and-shoot powers played just like their real life counterparts, but the creative ones were stifled by the limitations of being in a fighting game.

But…

It wasn't solid enough.

"Adrien, I'm worried about you."

He looked away and exhaled. "Yeah."

His controller jumped from hand to hand.

"I was afraid seeing her face again would bother me." His voice was soft. Secret. "But it was just a game, and it didn't. And I thought, 'If I play against her, I can defeat her as much as I want and that will make me feel better.' So I got the game from Max and I played against her as everyone and it didn't matter at all. It didn't _change _anything. So then I tried playing _as _her. And it was like I was back in control. I mean...I've never really been in control, but that _helpless _feeling started to go away. I was in control."

He put the controller on the desk.

"Most of my friends have been akumatized. My bodyguard has been akumatized. And I don't think of any of them as monsters or boogie men. They are people I love. Vivica's a real person, too. She's a real person, and she looped just as long as me, the only difference I'm the only one who remembers it. And then you saved her."

Later, Ladybug will replay this conversation in her mind and be angry at herself for not giving Cat Noir and Viperion the credit they deserved. Saving Vivica had taken all three of them. But in the moment, Ladybug was only flattered. "Oh."

"I really do like this game. And I like Vivica, and I like her music."

Ladybug put her hand on his. Her thumb swept rhytmically across his knuckles, the ring he always wore making an extra bump. "It would be okay if you didn't."

He turned his hand over. Their palms slid against one another and their fingers fell into place. Interlocked. "Yeah. But it's also okay that I do. And I know you are very busy saving the world and it's serious work, but do you think you have time for one more round?"

"I will always have time for you, Adrien."

He smiled.

* * *

Written in marker on Ms. Bustier's Classroom Expectations poster:

**The House Rules**

**1: Forgive yourself  
****2: Grow and get better** **  
****3: Remember we are a community, and we're all in this together.**


End file.
